JD strengthens Moutai partnership

The annual 618 Grand Promotion on Chinese e-commerce site JD began on 1 June, with sales of Moutai products in the first five minutes up 118% year-on-year.

JD’s partnership with Moutai started in 2014. From this March, JD strengthened its partnership with Kweichow Moutai and it is now able to source products directly from the brand. It received the largest quota of Moutai products among all retailers in China, reinforcing its position as a reliable source for Chinese consumers to buy Moutai.

According to JD, Moutai’s popular products, such as 43% ABV Moutai, Chennian Moutai and classic 53% ABV Feitian Moutai, which is the hardest to get hold of, are all available on the platform.

The national liquor is always in high demand, yet the online retailer is very confident in the partnership due to the support of its self-built logistics system and leading retail technology.

For example, in the recent promotion, sales began on 1 June. Each customer could only buy two bottles at a time, and no more than five bottles in a single month. Purchase is only open to customers who have had their real names verified, ensuring no customer can register multiple accounts to buy the product. The product sold out in a few seconds every time.

To prevent scammers from trying to cheat the system, in 2017, JD launched an “anti-scalper” system for Moutai products. Leveraging big data to analyse customers’ browsing history, demographic, location, and occupation, the system can automatically distinguish scalpers from real customers. So far the system has intercepted over 100,000 scalpers’ orders.

JD Logistics will pick up the products from Moutai and store them in the company’s warehouses. Since June 2018, the e-commerce site has used a blockchain traceability system for Moutai. All Moutai products have its exclusive traceability codes, which include information of the complete journey of the delivery. The platform shares the data with Moutai every month to improve the system with Moutai experts. Since the beginning the traceability program, it is reported that customers’ satisfaction has improved to over 99%.

JD has also worked with Moutai’s sub-brand Wangmao, which targets a younger consumer base, and became the exclusive sales channel for Wangmao products. Going forward, JD.com will fully leverage its technology, logistics, big data, and supply chain capabilities to work with Moutai on deeper cooperation in cross-channel projects, finance, and logistics.